I watched a documentary once about people who had lost a limb. Apparently, it is common knowledge that many amputees can feel their lost arm or leg. In some instances, they can even feel pain from a limb that is no longer there – this is called phantom limb pain. Even if you throw a ball at an amputee’s lost arm, for instance, they will instinctively try to catch it with their phantom arm. Of course, they adjust eventually, but the feeling and awareness never really go away. I often wondered about this phenomenon. Is it the same mechanism that drives us to yearn for people we’ve lost?
A recent study in neuroscience suggests that our brains create a virtual representation of ourselves and our environment – just like the Matrix. What we experience as reality is actually a constructed representation using our five senses, memory, logic and intensions. In addition, our representation of the world gets reinforced the more we experience the same thing. And at the same time, our brains can reconstruct our sense of reality to suite our present situation or intentions – like valuing food more when we are hungry. Even more interesting, our brains can create an entirely new reality without us knowing, and we experience it as a matter of fact. This leads us to a fundamental insight, which is that the world is necessarily different from what we think it is because our perceptions are ever-changing constructions.
Since our perceptions are malleable, they necessarily lag behind reality. Like a dog’s tail, when something changes in the “real world”, let’s say, our perceptions follows suite, albeit after that fact. For this reason, when we experience a big disruption such as losing a limb, a loved one or a job, it takes time for our brains to reconstruct the new reality because our perceptions rest on heavily reinforced experiences. Incidentally, this disruption and reconstruction process is what we experience grief. If we are to use Kübler-Ross’s five stages, it begins with denial. I guess denial is the stage where the new reality is at odds with our representational reality, and we simply refuse to accept that things have changed. Accordingly, we eventually accept the change, albeit after a while.
But I find Kübler-Ross’s five stages somewhat incomplete. Having lost my father 15 years ago now, I cannot really say I have reconciled myself with that fact. There is something about the thought of him that elicits a deep sense of yearning, especially around significant times of the year, such as his birthday. I still talk to him as if he were sitting next to me even though I know, rationally and physically that he is not here.
Perhaps there is some truth to the philosophical idea that personhood is different from humanhood. In his book, On Human Nature, Roger Scruton explored the idea of personhood as emerging from humanhood. By way of analogy, we can look at how a melody emerges from sound. As we know, sounds are merely movements of air at various frequencies. But when the sounds are carefully arranged, they can transport us instantly to a lovers arms, mom’s kitchen when the air was aroused with the smell of scones, or childhood memories with friends watching a scary movie for the first time – such is the power of a melody. What was merely the movement of air has become a thing in its own right that lives in the mind devoid of its physical origin. Like a melody, Scruton argued, a person emerges from the human – or the physical complex of flesh and bones – and becomes immortalised in the hearts and minds of others, long after one has physically departed.
As a side note, I just finished writing an app that allows you to send messages to loved ones after you have passed away. Read more about it here.
All the cultures around the world have grappled with this idea of humanhood and personhood, flesh and spirit, or what is sometimes called the mind-body problem. In the process of exploring different ideas, their civilisations inadvertently evolved and became identifiable as a mosaic of beliefs and cultural practices. Zen Buddhists and Taoists, for instance, believe in living in the moment and not clinging to the past nor the future. In their world, life is centred around the well-being of one’s humanhood (as it were) and how we harmonise with our environment. In service of this idea, meditation is a tool for bringing the mind back to the body to live in the present moment, unencumbered by attachments and desires. Contrary to many misconceptions, meditation is not a tool for escaping reality, it is a means of coming back to it.
As a member of the Ndebele nation in South Africa, a branch on the Nguni tree of people, we believe the body is animated by a spirit. What I referred to as personhood emerging from humanhood is not compatible with this way of looking at the world. Instead of a person emerging from the flesh, the person (or spirit) exists in its own right as a sovereign entity and manifests itself in the physical form. In a sense, the spirit is a trans-material entity, able to live in the spiritual plane and simultaneously descend to this world and conjure with the flesh. To this end, our bodies are like musical instruments that resonate or connect to certain frequencies, if you like, of the spiritual plane. Likewise, people (just like instruments), are different and therefore possess varying degrees of sensitivity to the other world. Hence, it is believed that some people have more access to the spirit world and are therefore given the responsibility of keeping us in touch with it.
Interestingly, Christianity (as a creationist doctrine) has yet another view of how we are constituted. Creationism presupposed that the world came into being from or by virtue of an original force or God. Furthermore, as per Genesis 1:26, we were endowed with free will, which allows us to carve our destiny in this world. Incidentally, free will disconnects us from, let’s say, the will of God because one cannot wield their will freely and be tethered at the same time. But to keep us in check, we are promised that one day we will be ushered to a permanent resting place representative of our deeds in this world. Nevertheless, central to this doctrine is the notion that we are humans (flesh) with the power to choose the spirit to imbibe. The spirit we choose becomes part of what emerges from this flesh to live in eternity, either in heaven or hell.
It goes without saying that I have omitted many other cultural ideas in this brief discussion. My aim was not to canvas and catalogue the world’s views of what we are, but to briefly explore the nature of humanhood and how it differs from personhood (or flesh and spirit) according to the major cultures that influence society today. Therefore, by way of a summary, the Christian view posits that we were created to rule and lord over the world. Yes, there are moral ideals and consequences – and there is no shortage of exemplars in the form of saints or even Christ Himself – nevertheless, each person remains free to exercise their will to whatever ends. On the other hand, Buddhists and Taoists are economical about spiritual ideals, especially given the immediate and often difficult task of having to live in this world. Hence, they advocate presence and harmony with the world. For the African, people never really die; when we leave this form, we remain accessible as active ancestors whose spirits can summon the flesh.
It is within this context that I draw compatibility issues Kübler-Ross’s idea of loss or grief. For Ross or the Western-Christian mind, if I may venture to be so gratuitous, we live on borrowed time and once we are done here we never come back. Hence, one must reckon with loss and eventually accept that what is gone is gone. For an African child such as myself, my father’s spirit is well within my reach. Sometimes we speak through dreams, and at other times I see him through events, people or things that happen fortuitously. The death of a loved one, therefore, does not end with acceptance. On the contrary, it serves as a reminder that one is connected far beyond the happenings of this world.
